


Twelve Steps (of Being Dean Winchester)

by apodiopsys



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-29 19:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apodiopsys/pseuds/apodiopsys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simply existing is painful. Dean has coping mechanisms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Steps (of Being Dean Winchester)

**Author's Note:**

> Dean and his alcoholistic tendencies are making me sad face all over the place. This fic is basically my reaction to Dean's speech about going to a bar and drinking during 7.04

**One.**  
Waking up is the hard part. It’s the point of the day where he goes from sheer, passed out bliss and _nothing_ , to utter awareness. Most times, he lies in the motel bed with springs pressing uncomfortably into his back, eyes closed and savoring the darkness. On blinking his eyes open he’d be greeted with harsh daylight coming through windows that Sam opened, and it hurts his eyes and his head and it’s just another sharp reminder of another day that he has to keep surviving.

Other times he sees things behind his eyelids, blood dripping from empty sockets in skulls and blades that are so sharp skin splits on contact. He sees the faces of the dead - momdadJoEllenAndyRufusSamSam _Sam_ \- and then his eyes are wide open and he’s clawing his way out of a t-shirt that’s slick and stuck to his skin with sweat. It feels like blood. Sometimes, Dean looks in a mirror and sees Alastair or Meg or Lilith standing behind him, sharpening blades or sucking on bones and before he knows it the mirror is cracked and his hand is bleeding.

It doesn’t hurt.

 **Two.**  
While Sam is getting them breakfast - because nine times out of ten, that’s what they do; Sam can’t sleep since Hell and sleeping is all Dean wants to do besides drink, so Sam gets them breakfast while Dean tries to wake up - he takes his first drink of the day. Normally, it’s the best one, a drop of relief burning its way down his throat and chest to flare warmth. For a few glorious seconds whiskey is the only thing that he can grab on, and he clutches the fingers of heat like it’s going to save his life.

If he notices that Dean drinks before it’s nine o’clock in the morning, Sam doesn’t say anything. He remembers sometimes, washing the glass and putting it back where he found it. Other times, Dean leaves it where he put it down: on a table, a counter, on top of the TV. Neither of them touch it until later. If they’re checking out they leave it for someone else to deal with. If they’re staying Sam does it when Dean isn’t looking, pretending that it’s a recent glass or that it’s water or that it isn’t real.

 **Three.**  
He watches Sam when Sam isn’t watching him. They watch each other. He notices every time Sam presses down onto the cut in his hand; it won’t heal properly and Dean finally forces him to at least get disinfectant so that they don’t have to end up having to amputate. Above anything else, above being a _son_ and a _brother_ and a _hunter_ and a _man_ and an _almost alcoholic_ , Dean is Sam’s protector. It’s been his job since the day he was born, since mom and dad brought him home from the hospital and put him in his crib and said to Dean, standing proudly to the side with his fingers clasping the bars, _he’s your responsibility now, too._

Dean knows Sam better than himself; he sees when the cracks start flaying, when his skin feels too tight and drawn tight across his bones. He knows when Sam feels too big for his body and the room and the world, and he takes his hand or his wrist or his shoulder, holds on tight (tootightwaytootight) and tries to keep him from flying away to places where he can’t help him.

 **Four.**  
Driving is his only means of escape, the only safe thing he has left. Dean leaves sometimes, not for long, a few hours at most. He drives and drives and drives, trying to outrun the angels and the demons and the ghouls and ghosts and guns. His hands tight on the wheel, Dean turns the volume up and the windows down and feels his most whole with the car he’s built up from the bottom time and again. His car is more _him_ than he is, and sitting in the drivers seat watching fields rush past is the safest he ever feels, lately.

 **Five.**  
The second drink of the day comes at lunch. They go to a diner and Dean flirts with their waitress; his heart isn’t in it, he forces himself to do it. _So you don’t get out of practice,_ he tells himself. _So that when all of this is over you can find a nice girl and finally have what you want._ He flirts so that Sam doesn’t know.

Empty promises. Empty hope. Empty glass.

 **Six.**  
There are pep talks to himself during the day. He coaches himself in waking up (three, two, one, and up. Push back the covers. Get out of bed.) in brushing his teeth (toothbrush, toothpaste, water, and brush.) in showering (shampoo, rinse. Conditioner, rinse. Body soap, rinse.) Dean doesn’t shave most of the time, not anymore. He leaves it until there’s four or five days stubble, shaves it off just so that it can grow back again.

Hungry doesn’t have much meaning anymore. He feels empty most of the time, but not hungry, mourns for something he doesn’t know and definitely misses. Dean’s mouth is dry after a few mouthfuls of whatever they order or make or “borrow.” Everything is followed down by a sip, sometimes secret sips. His brother doesn’t need to see; what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Sam doesn’t need anymore hurt in his life.

 **Seven.**  
Weapons are cleaned on a rotating weekly basis. Guns one week, knives and blades the next. Rinse and repeat. Dean sits at a table (on a bed in the Impala on a bench in a park) and takes the guns apart, cleans them meticulously. They make clicks as they slide back together; pieces of metal bonding to make something _so_ much more dangerous is comforting. He breathes deep, refills salt cartridges. It’s all habit now.

Blades are sharpened on a whetstone. He does it slowly, drags silver over the surface until he has goosebumps, does it with the TV on a channel that shows some shitty sitcom at two in the morning while Sam sleeps in the bed next to his. Dean nods off while he does it, vision blurring and eyes sliding shut. He swears up and down that the bleeding is an accident; he doesn’t mean to fall asleep and he doesn’t mean to let the knife slip.

But he knows what Sam means, understands that the pain helps keep unwanted visions away and himself on the ground.

 **Eight.**  
Remembering a time that wasn’t painful like this is hard. He thinks back past an angelic civil war and an apocalypse, past him going to hell and then his brother going too. Castiel walking into the reservoir and not coming back. His trenchcoat. Leviathans. Even before all of that there’s missing dad and Meg and finding each other again. There’s Jess getting killed, riding out on flames that pin her to the ceiling. Sometimes, Sam still wakes up screaming.

His memories are blurry; too bright and too detailed and thinking too hard about them give him headaches that could get him killed. There isn’t room in this world to make mistakes.

 **Nine.**  
When holding a gun that you’re supposed to be cleaning to the back of your head - the inside of your mouth, behind your ear, under your chin - take a step back, and take a drink. Take one more. And then slowly take another.

The problem is that even after everything he’s been through, he has more dignity than suicide has to offer.

 **Ten.**  
The silver flask that he has isn’t a secret, and he doesn’t treat it like one. Dean drinks on his way to the Impala, on his way back. He drinks on the job, before they interview witnesses. He drinks in his room at Bobby’s house, ignoring the fact that they’re blatantly talking about him behind closed doors. Confronting them about it would be pointless. Dean doesn’t have a problem; he has a way of coping.

 **Eleven.**  
Dean watches. Dean waits. Cracks are going to form and his mask is going to slip, slip, slip, crash. It’s only a matter of time. He waits.

 **Twelve.**  
While Sam does research - reads, watches TV, pretends that he isn’t seeing the devil while he takes a piss, whatever - Dean pours himself a drink. The bottle stands on the nightstand, half full. A glass is cradled in his hand, half empty. He drinks. Empty. There’s white noise in the background, rushing in his ears. A gun lies under his pillow, for protection (against himself). He pours himself another, and the rushing gets louder and the silence is too much. It takes too much effort to reach for the remote to turn on the TV and block out the silence.

He doesn’t know where his drink disappears. It’s in the glass one moment, it isn’t the next. Pour one more. Dean doesn’t miss the careful look that Sam gives him when he walks past his bed on his way to (from?) the bathroom. It’s easy to ignore, the same way he’s ignoring the fact that his bottle is too close to empty for comfort. It’s another thing to add to the ever growing pile of things that, because he doesn’t think about, doesn’t exist.

Finally passing out is the best part of his day. He smells - is - like an alcoholic. He sleeps in the clothes that he’s worn for three days straight, passed out in a haze of drunken spirits and walking nightmares. Dean never wants to wake up.

Inevitably, he will.  



End file.
